Musings of a life without a car in California, well at least San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley. Full of tips, observations and impact of automobiles on our lives.
Check out the links to the right for resources and tips for reducing car usage. Get Active! Start Moving on your own energy! You can contact me at carfreeincalifornia@mac.com

Monday, July 07, 2008

Speaking of religious conversions...

Again the LA Times is talking about how car loving Southlanders are increasingly taking the bus and mass transit. The price of gas is really making people thing about something they use to take for granted. It's like when you go swimming and you start thinking about your breathing like nothing else. One interesting side effect of the increase in mass transit is the increase in it's perceived safety. Bryanne Sykes noticed the following transformation:

"The good thing with gas getting more expensive is, more and more people are riding it," says Sykes.

In the past, when she got back to Long Beach about 9 p.m., the lonely walk to her car, down a dark street between the tracks and a park, was eerie. "I would stay on the phone with my husband as I walked," she said.

"In the last month, it's me and 10 other people with briefcases and computers," she says.

The sprawling distances of parking lots make our human scale distances forbidding and frightening, so it's good that safety in numbers is making mass transit feel safer.

Challenges still exist, the requirement to make multiple transfers dissuades people from taking mass transit. However, if citizens in one of the most car dependent places in America can share the ride more often, there is hope.

2 Comments:

Except that NOW the train is all full and stuff when I ride it, and sometimes I don't even get a seat!! Sheesh! Stop telling Angelenos to ride mass transit, Charles!! It messes with my peaceful commute! ;) Kidding! Kidding! (Sort of.)

hey arduous, there still is room on Caltrain and BART (though lately the bike car is getting full too), ever feel like the cool hip band you liked before everyone else did is now on the top of the charts, and you think dang they sold out.

LA is going to be really tricky to see how they handle this, I think four day work weeks are going to come soon, I don't see an alternative. Well I guess everyone could start riding bikes :)